


Fly By Night

by sawbones



Series: Auto-Pilot [2]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Bittersweet, Helicopter sex, Hero Worship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 15:47:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15367938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawbones/pseuds/sawbones
Summary: When Pequod is rescued from the Soviets by Snake with barely a scratch on him, he thinks he has to be the luckiest man in Diamond Dogs. He might be right - or he might not.





	Fly By Night

**Author's Note:**

> You don't HAVE to read Auto-Pilot to understand, but it might help.  
> Has a smidge of implied Vkaz and Bosselot if you squint.
> 
> Anyway, today's lesson is: meet your heroes, but maybe don't fuck 'em. Also hand cream is not lube.

_ Fists on flesh. Metal on flesh. Leather and rope and fire on flesh. It could be worse, Pequod tells himself, because at least he’s got his legs tied together and not apart. They keep asking him the same questions over and over but the only time he opens his mouth is to spit out more blood. He’s a Diamond Dog and diamonds don’t crack. They’re made under pressure, not broken by it, and it’s this idea he keeps rolling around his dehydrated, sweat-soaked mind to stop himself from going crazy. _

_ He’s never been captured before; the interrogations are just like they were in the drills they ran, to his surprise. They have been trained well, and he knows with his whole heart they have Commander Ocelot to thank for that. It’s been four days and he’s sure he can go four more, but he doesn’t know what might happen on the ninth day, or the tenth. He wants to believe that there will be a rescue, that Boss will come riding in on his chopper somehow recovered from the ambush to storm the shitty compound he’s in and whisk him away - or, more likely, he wants to believe that the Boss will come in the night and slip under the door like a shadow, heaving Pequod over his shoulders to later dump his ass on the grass while waiting forty minutes for a stranger to pick them up.  _

_ He wants to believe, but he’s not sure he can: he’s just a pilot. A good one, a reliable one, but still just one of a dozen at motherbase. They’ll come for him if they can, but they won’t risk too much for it. Won’t risk Boss for it. He’s worth something but it’s not  _ **_him_ ** _ , and that’s okay with Pequod. _

_ He curls in on himself as much as he can, trying to stop the bare concrete floor leeching the last of the heat from him. He can’t see with a hood on his head, but he can tell it must be getting late. The air is cooling down, and outside, the night birds begin to sing. _

 

\--

 

When Pequod opened his eyes, the first thing he saw in nearly a week was a photograph of the Boss and Master Miller on motherbase taped to the wall above him. He had to blink a few times to pull it into focus; Snake’s smile was tight-lipped but it reached his eye, and even the commander looked to be in good spirits. He was in it too, Pequod realised belatedly, shrinking in the corner, just in frame and no more. It took him a moment to reach through the fog, but he could remember the day it was taken - Ocelot ambushing them on the helipad, back when they only had one. They were just back from a successful sortie, the mood was high and the sun was mild and sweet for a Seychelles summer. 

Pequod smiled as he closed his eyes again. It had been a good day. There were dozens of other photos around that one, and Pequod hoped they’d all been good days, even the ones he wasn’t in (almost all of them). He wanted to focus on that instead of the haze of pain that saturated his whole body, but it was hard when the very vibrations of the helicopter caused him to suffer. 

The helicopter?  _ His _ helicopter. 

“Boss?” he tried to say, but it was choked by the sandpaper in his throat. A half-beat and a canteen appeared, nudging at his shoulder. The effort it took to reach up and grab it was gargantuan, but Pequod managed. Swallowing the water felt like swallowing glass, but it had been days since he’d drank anything that wasn’t splashback from a bucket thrown in his face. 

Ignoring the protests from his stiff neck, he turned his head to look up. Snake was perched on the edge of the bench above him; his face was red, gore caught in his hair and beard, his eye a flash of white in the dim light of evening. The hand that had given him the canteen lingered by his head, knuckles brushing his cheek, so gently it could have stripped the skin from his bones. It was tacky and smelled of iron and rot, but there was a question in that touch. Pequod nodded, turned away. He was okay. He’d be okay.

 

\--

 

A single night in the infirmary was all Pequod was afforded, then he was cleared for light duty. The general consensus on base was that he’d been a lucky son-of-a-bitch; aside from a few broken fingers and bruised ribs, the worst of it had been the dehydration. Everything else had been mostly superficial. He still had almost all his teeth, all his limbs, all his faculties. It should have made him grateful, but Pequod mostly just felt guilty.

The Boss didn’t visit him in the medbay, but Miller did, and that just made it worse. Officially he’d come to debrief him, and to see what damage control Ocelot would need to do if he’d spilled his guts, but Pequod couldn’t shake the feeling he was sizing him up - not unkindly, but with the quiet intensity of a man looking and maybe hoping to find someone who shared a particular kind of burden. Pequod didn’t know the exact details of the rescue mission, but he’d seen the state Snake was in on the chopper. He’d torn the place apart, and Pequod was able to walk out of the infirmary on his own two feet after a saline drip and a good night’s lightly-medicated sleep. It was embarrassing enough he’d been captured in the first place.

Pequod unfolded his bedroll on the floor of the helicopter, placed neatly between the benches. He kept it stowed under the pilot’s chair, wedged in beside the floatation device; from running his own drills, he knew he could go from sleeping to zipped up and ready to fly in less than ninety seconds. He’d be slower with the fingers on his right hand taped together as they were, but not by much. He kept his pack by the folded jacket he used as a pillow, but there wasn’t anything in it that couldn’t be dumped on the helipad in a hurry - a change of clothes, a couple of rations, some toiletries. It was more than he kept in his bunk, anyway.

It was a nice night, just shy of being too warm. He kept the side door open so he could see a sliver of the ocean, how it changed from flint blue to pink, orange, red as the sun set. He was tired but he didn’t want to sleep, not yet; there were no off-base missions scheduled for that evening and he was off flight duty until his hand healed fully, but that didn’t mean he could relax - nor did he want to. He drank his water with the orange-flavoured rehydration packets mixed in and waited for someone to need him, because that’s what he did. 

With no books, no journal, no cassette player to keep his mind occupied, Pequod lay down on his bedroll and as he often did let his thoughts wander to the photographs that Boss had  plastered on the walls. It was cute, in a way; bizarrely human, like a proud father keeping polaroids of his kids in his wallet. Most were candid shots of Miller, Ocelot, a few of the older squaddies that must have came from the MSF days - but mainly Miller, invariably grim faced. Snaps of D-Dog being adorable, and the angels even more so, and more than one scenic vista taken through the window of the helicopter. Random groups of Dogs jostling to get into frame, exuberant that the Boss was even looking in their direction. Eli, scowling and sullen but not as much as usual, maybe even trying to suppress a grin for the camera. A handful of headshots, pulled from personnel files - memories of soldiers they never got to catch on camera.

There were a few photos of the chopper, mostly action shots of it coming in hot, the sun catching the blades just right. Pequod liked that they were pinned to the ceiling and not the walls, like they were really flying. There were no pictures of Pequod on his own; he was always a figure in the background, always half a face behind someone’s arm, always just turning away. In one shot, he could see the outline of himself behind the glass windshield, his hand raised like he was pointing finger guns. He can’t see his face but he can make out the white of his teeth in a smile; Pequod held out his arm, tried to mimic the pose. He pulled the invisible trigger and wondered what he was doing.

It felt voyeuristic in a way, like he was pawing through a photo-album that had been stashed under a bed. These were all the things the Boss cherished the most in the world, his family, his lovers, his men. He kept them there in the ACC for a reason, and that reason wasn’t for Pequod or anyone else to examine them. 

More than anything, though, Pequod wished there was a photo of him there on the ceiling with his bird. He would pose for one if the Boss wanted him to, with his helmet off and his arm around D-Dog. He wanted to be looked at with the same tired fondness he saw him look at the rest of them. He was the last person the Boss saw before he left for every mission, and the first one he saw when he came back - Pequod wanted that to be true, always.

He sighed and closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against his ‘pillow’. Maybe it would be easier just to focus on the pain instead, softened as it was by enough analgesics to drop a horse. It would probably hurt less, but what could he do? He wanted the Boss so badly, he could smell the dry, bitter vapor of his cigar like he was really--

Pequod sat up as quickly as his bruised ribs would let him. The Boss was standing outside the helicopter, framed by the milky twilight sky behind him as he leant against the doorframe, puffing on his cigar. When Pequod began to scramble, thinking an emergency had come up, he stopped him with a casual wave of his hand. 

“You mind if I--?” he gesture with his cigar, asking permission to come in. Pequod boggled at him for a moment: it was  _ his _ helicopter, afterall, and Pequod was the one who wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Climb aboard, sir.”

The Boss settled on one of the benches and slipped his cigar into the pocket of his fatigues. He had obviously washed and changed since the last time they’d met, but Pequod swore he could still smell blood. It didn’t bother him, not as much as the way Snake looked over him, silently cataloguing the bruises and burns that weren’t hidden by his mummy-wrap of bandages, his black eye, his burst lip. He was sitting on his bedroll wearing boxers and a tshirt, it wasn’t like he could hide.

“You look like shit,” he concluded, and Pequod grinned so hard he nearly split his lip again.

“Boss, you’re going to put me back in the infirmary talking like that,” he said, gripping at his chest like he had been wounded. He let his hand drop into his lap, and his grin slip into something more reserved, “I’m fine though, sir. It looks worse than it is.”

Snake didn’t seem to share his amusement. He shifted in his seat and frowned, “You could have died. You had been unconscious for hours when I found you. You did well, holding out as long as you did.”

Pequod could hear the implied ‘for a pilot’ behind that - a week would have been nothing for a man like Snake. He was barely better than a recruit in comparison. He tried not to laugh again, “They went easy on me.”

“They would have lost patience eventually,” the Boss said. 

It was so matter-of-fact, so blunt that it wicked away the last of Pequod’s smile. He rubbed the edge of his fingertape where it had caught on the hair on his knuckles; it was already starting to itch. Had it really been such a near miss? It still didn’t feel like it, but they had councillors on motherbase and in training they said that the mind had ways of dealing with trauma that meant it didn’t deal with it at all, only packed it away for another time when it registered that you felt safe enough, like a practical joke, a fucking PTSD jack-in-the-box. Pequod hadn’t spoken to any councillors yet.

“Yeah, well. I guess we’ll never find out now,” he said. The Boss’s frown deepened, and Pequod realise that had sounded more accusatory than grateful, “I mean, I-- I don’t know. I let you down and you still pulled my ass out of the fire, Boss. Anyone else, they would have just left me. Is this what it means to be a Diamond Dog?”

Snake didn’t say anything at first, didn’t react at all other than blink at him. He sighed and held out his hand, “Let me see.”

Pequod shuffled forward on his knees and offered his injured hand to Snake, who took it in a loose and impersonal grip. He wasn’t particularly gentle as he turned it back and forth, testing the range of motion in his fingers and the stiffness in his wrist, but Pequod knew better than to flinch. Show no weakness, don’t bare your throat. The pain was a dull throbbing heat, pricked with needles when the bones ground together, but Snake wasn’t wearing gloves, and his skin was as warm and dry as his expression.

“Would have been a pain in the ass to train another pilot anyway,” he said. The examination was apparently over but the he was still holding Pequod by the wrist. The Boss was looking at him almost expectantly, and Pequod could feel himself shrinking under his attention. 

“I’m sorry, Boss,” he said, “I let you down.”

He wondered if his face was as flushed as he felt, the first beads of perspiration on his brow. There was no sea breeze to soothe the heat of an Indian Ocean evening, and Snake had moved his hold from his wrist, to his palm, until he was gripping his fingers. He caressed them for a moment, fingertips to fingertips, before he squeezed; he took Pequod’s gasp of pain as a chance to grab him by the chin with his metal hand and lick his way into his mouth.

Pequod’s first instinct, beyond snatching his hand away, was to bite down - he resisted, of course, nearly choking on his own tongue was he let his lips be parted, raided. Part of him had expected the Boss to be savage in his affections, forceful and to the point like everything else he did in life, but it wasn’t like that. He kissed him deeply, deliberately, like he was trying to pull secrets out of him. It was desperate, bordering on clumsy as he wrapped his arms around Pequod, hands fisting in the back of his shirt. Pequod could barely do anything but cling onto him, his hands braced on Snake’s hips. The beard grated, his bruised ribs ached the tighter he was held, and he was sure his heart would beat straight out of his chest if Snake let him go right then. It was devastating. He felt himself splinter right down the middle.

There was blood on Snake’s bottom lip when he pulled back, and it took Pequod a moment to realise it came from the cut on his own. He touched it with broken fingers, and marvelled at how unfairly composed Snake looked when he felt as though he was going to shake himself apart. He must have been staring, because Snake smirked, shook his head slowly. 

The Boss slipped off the bench; he pushed Pequod back by his shoulders, guiding him to lay down. He grabbed Pequod’s tshirt by the hem and started to pull it off; Pequod let him, as pliant as a lamb. His boxers followed suit, and just like that he was naked aside from his bandages, unbearably vulnerable beneath Snake’s roving gaze. Every ounce of self-preservation was telling him to curl up, to run, to hide his soft underbelly from such a predator; he spread his legs, inviting him closer. He wanted it all, he wanted teeth at his neck and fingers dug into his bruises - if that was all the Boss had to offer, he’d take it. 

\--But the hands on his chest weren’t rough as they skirted his bandages, coming to rest in a loose link around Pequod’s neck. Their touch was hungry, eager to explore, but not so much to lay claim and even less to lay waste. He touched him for the sake of touching, and rumbled his approval when Pequod filtered back to reality long enough to start stripping him of his fatigues. The Boss’s hair was coarse under his fingers, and he caressed the edges of scars he’d hardly dared to touch before - he _ did  _ get to see them, he marvelled, as much as could be seen with a body draped over his own. They were beautiful and a little sad, so much like the lone eye that caught the light as Pequod strained to be kissed again.

The fear faded but never truly left, pulled away piece by piece with each stroke of Snake’s tongue against his own. Pequod wanted to crawl inside that kiss, to leave his battered body behind and become a part of Snake’s legend, an arm or a leg or a finger to be used. It was a strange feeling, one that felt too big for the hollow in his chest he’d made for it. Was it leaking out of him? Could Snake taste it in his mouth?

He turned his head to the side, breaking the kiss, letting the air back into his lungs. Snake took the pause in stride, pushing himself onto his knees. His cock jutted out proudly before him; he scratched his stomach as he glanced around around the helicopter, ponderous and scathingly unhurried.

“You have anything we can use?” he asked, and it took a moment for Pequod to realise what he meant, and another moment after that to find his voice.

“I have-- hand cream?” he offered lamely. Snake’s expression didn’t change, so without looking he pointed at the knapsack he knew was tucked behind the pilot’s seat, threadbare and holding damn near all his worldly possessions. It wasn’t ideal and Pequod knew it would sting come morning, but it was better than tearing something - or worse, turning the Boss away. 

Snake emptied the bag out on the floor, sending his comb and kohl and clean socks tumbling. For some reason, he stopped to read the label on the hand cream, taking long enough that Pequod huffed in frustration. He nudged him with his foot, making sure he was looking when he took his cock in hand. A strange look passed over Snake’s face, but it was gone as quickly as it arrived; he smirked and crawled back over Pequod to kiss him again, pushing his hand aside so he could take over instead, warm metal on hot skin. It was too tight, too rough, but it was good and Pequod would have done anything if it meant he didn’t stop.

It was easy to pretend they were so alone as he mouthed quiet nothings against Pequod’s neck, wet tongue, blunt teeth like there wasn’t a whole base of men attached to their helipad, like they wouldn’t hear boots on patrol in a few minutes. He didn’t want the fantasy to end but neither of them could afford to be reckless.

“Boss,” he urged - when had his voice become so raspy? “Do it, Boss.”

He pushed at Snake’s wrist until he took the hint and released his cock. Pequod heard him open the cap of the hand cream, felt him probe with one slick finger and press in with two. It hurt, a sharp ache like pulling a muscle, but it was bearable - for Snake, it was more than bearable. It was perfect just to be near him.

Too soon, Snake’s fingers were gone and the blunt head of his cock was pressing into Pequod: unrelenting, but not unforgiving. Pequod breathed like Ocelot had taught him to, the kind of breathing that kept him steady during his week as a Soviet prisoner. He bit his lip and he bowed his back - did Snake like it when he looked like this? Did he feel good for him? Snake’s eye was shut and his mouth was open, lips barely parted, his brow creased in concentration. It was like he was somewhere else entirely until Pequod turned his head to kiss him breathlessly, stubble scraping his cheek, bringing the Boss back to earth. 

He smiled, or at least that’s what Pequod thought he could feel in the dark, those lips curving against his own. When he bottomed out, he didn’t wait to start thrusting, spreading his thighs to force Pequod’s wider. Neither of them made any sound louder than their steady, heavy breathing, though Pequod had to bite his lip to smother a whimper when Snake hooked an elbow beneath his knee and forced it towards his chest, the pain from his ribs knifing through the pleasure in a way he couldn’t say he hated. 

Snake didn’t ask if he was okay; he brought his metal hand to Pequod’s throat and squeezed - not too tight, no, but just enough. His breath caught on red fingers and his head began to swim. He could feel his pulse pushing at his temples, at the back of his mouth, in his fingertips. Every bruise he’d picked up and forgotten about in the last week woke up as one throbbing ache, and Pequod was forced to become aware of every inch of his body he had neglected. 

Snake let go of his throat and he came across his belly with a shudder that shooks his bones. Too easy, he was always too easy; he couldn’t tell if Snake was grinning against his shoulder or just baring his teeth. It didn’t matter, they meant the same thing anyway. Bare your teeth, bare your neck, open your legs a little more. He should have told Snake to pull out but he didn’t think about it until it was too late, and Snake was kissing him, tongue in his mouth, choking him without his hands.

If Pequod could have spoken then he might have said thank you and ruined the whole mood, so he was glad that he couldn’t catch his breath with the weight bearing down on him, a man-shaped titan suddenly slack in his arms like he was already asleep. Pequod wanted that, god, he begged for it behind his half-shut eyes. Stay. Sleep. Be with me. 

But Snake wasn’t sleeping, and maybe he never did. A moment later and he began to stir, pushing himself up onto his elbows then sitting back on his heels. He scrubbed a hand over his face, still watching Pequod with that same roving eye - not with hunger this time, but with a sort of muted curiosity that made him squirm. He pushed his thighs apart again just to see the mess he made.

“Medbay gave you spare bandages?” he asked, his voice gravelled. He let Pequod’s legs go, and he took that as a sign to sit up despite the screaming protest in his ribs, “Painkillers too?”

“Yeah, Boss,” he said, “Plenty of both.”

Snake nodded, and then moved to the side to collect his clothes. He dressed with his back to Pequod, though not out of any kind of modesty. Pequod didn’t move from where he was sitting, other than to grab his discarded boxers to clean himself off a little. He could shower in the morning. He wasn’t going to be leaving the ACC again that night, not unless Snake asked him to, and of course he wouldn’t.

Snake turned back to him, still half-crouched like he was afraid to knock his head on the ceiling. He didn’t say anything, and Pequod realised he was waiting for him to speak first. He wanted permission to leave - to be dismissed.

“It’s late,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else that wouldn’t cut his throat on the way out his mouth, “I should get some sleep, and so should you.”

Snake grunted in quiet affirmation. It might have been dismissive from anyone else, but Pequod knew better. Snake pulled open the helicopter door and gave him one last nod and a tight-lipped smile, and then he was gone. Pequod didn’t even hear his boots hit the ground.

 

\--

 

Pequod picked over the last of his MRE as he sat in the open doorway of the helicopter, bare feet kicking idly where they hung off the edge. The sun was well and truly down by then but its warmth still lingered, soft compared to the heat in his belly, between his legs, not  _ quite _ stinging but no flush of first love either. Even despite that, he felt loose-limbed and sated, in body at least; he couldn’t stop his mind from flitting from one thought to another, string tying itself in knots. It was hard not to feel buoyant, like he could float off without engines or rotors even as tiredness and discomfort weighed him down.

He had to remind himself more than once not to get carried away, swept up in expectations and hopes and quiet, sharp little desires that sat in his gut like caltrops. But-- it had happened. The Boss had come for him, slaughtered a whole base of captors for him. He’d brought him back and saw him tended to, and then came to very same helicopter he’d been carried home in and kissed him, and touched him, and fucked him so sweetly. It had happened just like that, as though it had been waiting for him, and what else could he do but lean into it?

Pequod sighed, though not unhappily. His MRE was cold and the stars were bright, and it was long past the time when he should have been asleep. He tucked the packaging away in a side compartment to be tossed in the morning, but just as he got up to haul the door shut, he stopped. The was a sound, a faint one, like someone restlessly tossing coins in their pocket. He only had a second to consider it before Commander Ocelot appeared, ducking under the tail of the chopper with his usual-unusual grace.

If it wasn’t for his spurs, Pequod wouldn’t have known he was there at all; he was reminded suddenly of house cats and bell-collars, and hope it didn’t show on his face as he tried to rearrange himself into a passable salute. 

“At ease, soldier; just checking in,” Ocelot said as he rounded on Pequod. He stood with his hip cocked, thumbs hooked into his belt, “How are you feeling?”

“A little sore if I’m honest, sir, but well on the mend already,” Pequod said. 

“Pleased to hear it,” Ocelot said, “We need you back in the sky sooner rather than later. I don’t think it’ll do anyone any good to have you grounded for long.”

Pequod nodded, tried to keep his smile on the right side of polite. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Ocelot was scrutinizing him from behind his personable-impersonable facade, prodding at his bruises without fingers - it was his job, after all, but it still made Pequod want to squirm. Every conversation with the commander felt like having a loaded gun pressed to the hinge of your jaw, even if he was just chatting about the weather. The silence began to stretch into something hard around the edges, and Pequod took a breath when Ocelot did.

“Now I know this isn’t what you want to hear right now, but in light of what’s happened, we’ve decided the best course of action would be to assign you a co-pilot,” Ocelot said with a bob of his head. The eponymous ‘we’. Did that include the Boss, or even Miller? Pequod got the feeling it rarely did, “We’ve got a few candidates in mind already, nothing concrete but everything should be finalised by the time you’re cleared to fly again.”

Pequod blinked once, twice, trying to figure out if the commander was pulling his leg or not. Being forced to share his bird with someone else was the second worst thing he could think of, after being grounded permanently. 

“With all due respect, sir, I really don’t think that’s necessary. I’m at my best when I fly alone, that’s how it’s always been, and the ambush-- well, nothing like that has ever happened before. It won’t happen again either. Assigning a second pilot would be a waste of manpower at the very least.”

Ocelot waited until he was finished floundering. A strange smile pulled at the corners of his mouth, “Really? I heard it gets real lonely in the air sometimes. Thought you wanted some company.”

A shiver crawled down Pequod’s spine, a tangible ripple of disgust. He swallowed and set his jaw, but it was hard to hold the commander’s knowing gaze. His earlier joy withered under it, replaced by a chill. Of course it was about Snake. Of  _ course _ it was. He’d be a damned fool to think anything happened on motherbase the commander wouldn’t know about. 

“It’s not so bad,” he said, amazed that he could force the words from between his teeth at all.

Ocelot gave a short, thin huff of laughter; he shifted to his other foot, took a step closer to the helicopter. It didn’t seem like he was enjoying their chat, but it was always hard to tell; he looked more bored than anything else, like this was some menial housekeeping task he felt he shouldn’t be the one to do.

“He thinks you’re a safe choice, you know. Clean. Loyal. No messy history, with him or the other men. Handsome enough, if that’s your thing. Good for a little stress relief,” Ocelot went on. He could have been talking about anyone in the world, or perhaps a particularly well-behaved dog, and Pequod struggled to comprehend he was talking about _ him _ . 

“He’s right enough, I suppose, and I can understand how these attachments can develop: spending so much time together, alone, seeing him at what you think is his highest and lowest. He relies on you, makes you feel special, right? Like you’ve been told a secret no-one else knows. Like you could really  _ be _ someone,” his drawl was as slow and steady as his pacing. It sounded rehearsed, and looked like he’d rather be somewhere else, “It’s easy to believe that, but now it’s time to forget about this little...flight of fancy, if you’ll excuse the pun.”

Pequod curled his hands into fists, his broken fingers making it feel like grabbing broken glass, “Isn’t that for the Boss to decide?”

“You might be forgiven for thinking so,” Ocelot said, and there was another dry smile, “But no. Diamond Dogs needs the Boss at his best. We can’t afford distractions at this point. We can’t afford...sentimentality. We’ve had our fun, but this ends here, tonight.”

“Is that an order?” 

The glass had spread from his hands, to his chest, to his throat. His voice was suddenly tight, scratchy, but he kept his face blank and his eyes hard.

“Does it have to be?” Ocelot asked, and when Pequod didn’t respond, he sighed, “Fine. So be it. Consider this a direct order to cease all interference - intended or otherwise - with Snake, his mission, or the overall running of Diamond Dogs. Call it fraternization, reckless endangerment, sedition, whatever you want so long as it stops.”

Pequod looked away.

“Sir.”

A single order and one word to acknowledge it. It hurt more than anything his torturers had done to him, but he had no resistance training for it this time. He  _ would _ resist, if he thought he could - just one taste would never be enough, but he knew better than to push against a man like Ocelot. Valued his life and his bird too much for that. The commander seemed unsatisfied by his response, but turned to leave anyway. As he did, he paused for just a moment with his hand on the doorway, right where Snake had been leaning hours ago.

“Forget about it. All of it.” he said, his voice dropping to something that was nearly gentle but his eyes as cold as ever, “He will.”

With that, he was gone, and Pequod was left with the ache in his chest and a meaning he couldn’t quite parse. The commander was right, of course, he always was - and even if he wasn’t, Pequod could only dream of the consequences if he dared to disobey. Motherbase was his home now, the Diamond Dogs his family; piloting for them was all he could ever see himself doing, and he couldn’t jeopardise that. 

He’d been a fool to think anything could come from two lonely men glancing across each other like missed shots, not when one of those men was someone like Big Boss. He was meant for something else, someone else maybe, something bigger than all of them; Pequod was only meant to fly him there.

Pequod didn’t have the energy to start re-compartmentalising all the soft little feelings he’d allowed to twist out of himself, not yet. That could come in the morning, thrown out with the underwear he’d used to clean himself and the packaging from the MRE. He’d let himself feel it for just a little while longer, could even chalk it down as another painful lesson learned. The swell of the sea had seemed as calm as a sleeping body earlier; now its rise and fall seemed more like an anxious, restless shift. 

Pequod pulled his legs back inside the chopper and hauled the door shut.

  
  



End file.
